“Abolishing the Yellow Streak” – Ku Hung-Ming

While Ku Hung-ming had nothing but strong words and contempt for modern Western civilization; industrialization, materialism, and democracy – or as he puts it: democrazy – he reserved some of his harshest criticism for those of his fellow compatriots who wished to introduce such concepts into China, without carefully weighing the consequences, and without regard for the millennial traditions and institutions of Imperial China…

Read Full Post »

Ku Hung-Ming – Higher Education

“The Ta Hsueh or Great Learning, better translated, thinks Ku Hung Ming, as “Higher Education,”is also to be found as Chapter 39 of the Li Chi. It was the twelfth-century philosopher, Chu Hsi, who lifted this book and the Chung Yung out of the Li Chi and, joining them with the Analects and the works of Mencius, formed the Four Books, thus giving them a greater importance than they had, tucked away in the Book of Rites. The Ta Hsueh may have been written primarily as the basis of an education for princes, but it has for centuries been studied by all who have aspired to any important place in government.”

Read Full Post »

Uncivilized United States – Ku Hung-ming

“Uncivilized United States,” was first published in the “North China Standard” of Peking, and was subsequently republished in the New York Times in 1921.

“If the United States were destroyed tomorrow, I want to ask what great spiritual thing have the Americans as a nation done which they can leave behind them to show to men of after generations that they were once a nation with a civilization.”

Read Full Post »

Neither Old School nor New School – the Timeless Sort: Ku Hung-ming, Part I

The life and works of the Chinese writer and diplomat, Ku Hung-ming, [Gū Hóngmíng 辜鴻銘] (1857-1928) have, in recent years, again begun to attract attention, after almost a century of neglect. His chief works, originally written in English, have now been translated into Chinese, due to the renewal of interest in traditional Chinese culture, and his English translations of Confucian texts have been the focus of attention by Chinese scholars in the field of translation studies.

Chiefly known for his controversial and reactionary political positions, he was a writer of great talent and a skilled translator. His writings and correspondence – with Tolstoy, among others, as well as descriptions left by those who met him, provide a wealth of material, but to date there has no been no systematic study of his life or thought. Critics have typically chosen to focus on a couple of fictional accounts of dubious value and spurious anecdotes to paint a picture of a deliberately polemical and bitter old contrarian.

Read Full Post »

The Philosopher

Another excerpt from ‘On A Chinese Screen’ by Somerset Maugham. The character of the ‘Philosopher’ is based on the Chinese writer and diplomat, Ku Hung-ming, [Gū Hóngmíng 辜鴻銘] (1857-1928).

Read Full Post »